Alone For Long
by gutter.xromance
Summary: In the moments before Shepard staggers to reach the Conduit, she is given a fleeting moment of peace and comfort across the sea with the man she loves that drives her to finish her mission if only to return to him. NOW A TWOSHOT.
1. Part I

_**AN - This is an angst fest. Takes place after the Reaper blows them up on the way to the Conduit to reach the Citadel, but BEFORE Shepard regains consciousness. **_

* * *

**Alone For Long**

_So, if a tear, when thou art dying,  
__Should haply fall from me,  
__It is but that my soul is sighing,  
__To go and rest with thee._  
- Stanzas, Emily Jane Bronte

She wakes gasping for breath, choking on water, the ever constant swell and recede of the surf threatening to drag her back out to sea if she doesn't move. Fingers clench in gritty sand and her knees pull sluggishly underneath her, finding enough purchase to raise her body to all fours. Lungs burn as she coughs up salt water, muscles shake and tremble trying to support her weight. She manages to drag her body, weary and heavy, from the waves and further onto land, barely aware of sunlight warming her skin.

Shepard collapses herself into the sand relishing in the warmth against her cheek. But where the hell is she? This thoughts forces her upright again to assess her surroundings. As far as the eye can see to her left and right is sandy white beaches and in front all crystal blue, white capped waters. There are no landmarks, no bright distant star in the clear sky to tell her where in the galaxy she might be.

_I must be dead_, she thinks because the last thing Shepard remembers is running to the Conduit with Anderson at her ten, James at her two and Kaidan at her six. They had been making good progress tucking and rolling to avoid the Reaper's blasts, but all it had taken was a scant moment of hesitation and they had all been hit, their entire squad decimated. She remembers screaming, burning, the feel of her own armor blown apart, pieces that were once meant to protect rapidly melting, shattering, cutting into flesh.

_I failed_.

The burning in the corners of her eyes and subsequent tears come unbidden. _Everything_ Shepard accomplished, every resource she gathered, everything she put together, every alliance she had built all worthless now because she had died in the last stretch.

No matter how big their fleet is, without the Crucible the Reapers will win.

But there is a freedom in the emotional release, a freedom that Shepard has not allowed herself in years because there was always one more mission, one more assignment that required her full attentions. She was not allowed to be seen as human, allowing herself to be molded into some idyllic figurehead of hope - the calm at the center of the storm when she was roiling, seething with turmoil within.

So she _finally_ grieves for everything she has lost, and everything she has yet to lose thinking about how she had not been living day to day because after Mordin, after Thane, after losing Thessia and after all the insurmountable decisions that should not have been hers to make, even living day to day had become _too hard_. Shepard does not know if there is a difference between day and night here and so lives now in the space between one painful, gasping breath and the next, telling herself that even after everything she has yet to fall; cutting herself on the shards of her broken heart and shouldering the limp figure of her crushed spirit.

Shepard grieves until she is spent and nothing is left except painful, tearless gasps and her thundering heartbeat. But she has at least one answer - there is day and night in this place where there is no screaming, no patter of gunfire, no burning, hollowed out buildings crumbling like so much refuse. And there are no bodies piled high around her, ravaged beyond recognition. The burning sun hangs low in the sky, and constellations completely unknown to Shepard are beginning to flicker into existence above the watercolor sunset. What there is, is peace; a tranquility that settles over her bones that had been beginning to feel utterly foreign to her as of late.

But there is also a sudden loneliness and Shepard wonders if she is the only one here. With so many dead or soon to be, it seems unlikely.

So she stands with the intent to seek out others, only now realizing the change in her clothing. God, how long has it been since Shepard has worn anything but a uniform? But the two-piece suit and sarong fit her well and she smiles as she wiggles her bare toes in the sand. Red hair tumbles around her face and down her arms in a length it hasn't been since she was sixteen - since Mindoir when a slaver had nearly caught her by grabbing the long plait of hair down her back. Curious, Shepard wanders to the edge of the water and looks down into to her reflection, into a face so many people had looked up to for hope, for guidance and _'please save us!'._ The once familiar scars are gone, so is the swoop in her nose and her skin is warmed by a healthy flush for the first time in a long time.

She has been made new.

She breathes what feels like her first breath of life, her first unmeasured breath before turning to walk down the beach. She walks with the abandon of 'I'll get there someday', taking her own unrushed pace because there is no need to rush here and yet with each step Shepard takes she feels as if she _is_ walking toward _something_. There is a pull in her stomach guiding her ever nearer to her destination and with each step closer, her heart quickens with anticipation though Shepard doesn't know what she is walking toward.

The sun sets and begins to rise again and still Shepard walks, slowly, deliberately, never wavering, never tiring as her feet carry her on and on and on. And it's in the pre-dawn hush, the moment of silence as the world holds its breath for the sun to share its brilliance that Shepard finally sees a figure on the horizon. Suddenly her chest is fluttering in urgency, knowing _this_ is what her feet have been carrying her toward and there are tears in the back of her throat but she can't get them out because all at once she is _running_. Suddenly the distance is too much and there is a _need_ to rush and the pull in her stomach becomes a violent _tug_ with each pound of her feet against the sand.

He laughs when she crashes into him and it breaks her heart all over again to hear it now knowing it's because they are both dead. But Shepard feels his mouth form into a smile against the curve of her neck as his arms lock around her back, holding her to him selfishly. And she thinks, _this_ is peace, this is salvation.

"Siha," he breathes into her hair and there is no coughing, no wheezing, no desperate gasping intake for air. The gravel of his voice is just as she remembers when he was well and his heart beats steadily against her own.

"I'm sorry," she says because she doesn't know what else to say. "I'm sorry I took so long."

Thane pulls back, her face cupped in his hands but there is sadness in his liquid gaze. He traces his thumb lovingly along the swell of her bottom lips and says, "I wish you would have taken longer, siha, and it pains me to tell you that you cannot stay when I wish so selfishly for you to remain."

She feels it again, the rupturing fault line that forms in her heart. "But -"

He shakes his head. "You must return, there is still much for you to do, but it is very nearly over. I promise you."

"I'm _tired_, Thane," Shepard says and for the first time hears it in her voice. And she is, she is _so fucking tired_ down to the marrow of her bones and the impulses of her cybernetic implants that keep her body from falling apart when it's the only thing she wants to do; exhausted beyond comprehension.

He swallows heavily and she knows instantly that this pains him as much as it does her. Thane's hands fall to her waist, his fingers curling against the bare skin she'd only had a short time to share with him. But here, they could have a lifetime, an eternity and that possibility is difficult to let go of.

"Let me stay here with you," she begs him, heart pounding, aching because she already knows what he's going to say.

"I want you to stay, siha, but even you must have realized that you can't. Not yet."

But what she hates the most is that his words have rung true. In her head, in the depths of her heart Shepard hears the echoes. She hears the gunfire returning, the crack of nearby flames, and the ghost of pain is already returning to her body. She hears the distant battle that is not yet finished and it calls out to her blood and each quickening, adrenaline filled beat of her heart is tinged with aching.

"I don't want to go," she says weakly, but Thane is already beginning to fade, he is already sending her away back to war and blood and pain and loss. He is sending her back to the bullets and pain of the bled-out slumped soliders, the 'fucks' and 'goddamns' and 'Jesus Christs' of the wounded.

"I know," he replies and bends over her.

And this at least is familiar for a little while - the feel of his lips against hers, the catch of her breath and the press of his cool hand against her back. Shepard tries her hardest to hold onto the feel of his fingers in her hair, the way her body tucks against his because it feels like she has gone far too long without it. And there is an unfathomable tenderness with which Thane kisses her, holds onto her, soft and patient and she thinks this is holding back. Their time is limited and there should be urgency, fever and passion - something primal driving their actions forward.

Thane pulls away from her when she tries to press closer, forehead pressed against hers but his fingertips are ghosting over her exposed collarbones. "Go now, siha. There will be time enough for us."

"I'm coming back, Thane," she promises him. "I won't leave you alone for much longer." Of this she is utterly confident.

His eyes find hers and the pain is back, but he says, "I know."

Shepard smiles, blinks slowly, deliberately and -

_Opens her eyes._

* * *

**EDITED: 5/9/12.  
And despite the 'Complete' tag on this,  
there will be a Part 2. I got talked into it.**


	2. Part II

_**AN - I got talked into a part two.**_

* * *

**Alone For Long**

**Part II**

_love is more thicker than forget  
__more thinner than recall  
__more seldom than a wave is wet  
__more frequent than to fail  
_- e.e. cummings

**"… The paths are open…"**

For better or for worse, Shepard makes her choice and wonders only too late if it's really the right one.

There is blood between her teeth and in her nose, dripping from her ringing, blown out ears. And there is _pain_ unlike anything she has ever experienced, so blinding and white in its intensity that she can only assume she is dying as it spirals, burns through her battered body. Her implants go haywire, sending mixed signals to her brain and arteries as they seize and collapse as her sacrifice shreds her spirit and her soul from her physical self.

She thinks about Joker always ready with a wry comment and who, for all his aloofness was surprisingly observant, he was the last person she died to save and knows how much he deserves to be happy and hopes EDI will give that to him. She thinks of Anderson, a man she looked up to when everyone was looking to her, who was proud of her, trusted her despite the questionable decisions she had made - a good man who did not deserve his fate. She thinks of Kaidan with his honor and sweet smile, his warm demeanor and laments that she couldn't love him as he loved her because he deserves someone who isn't broken, someone who is allowed to be human when they want to be…

… Shepard thinks of everyone she is leaving behind, who blindly hoped that she was infallible, invincible and followed her to the depths of hell and back on several occasions, had witnessed the worst the galaxy had to offer with her. But Shepard knew the truth of everything even before she experienced it - she wasn't coming back from this. There would be no reconstruction, no remains to find and if it were not for the ripples of effect she caused in the galaxy it would be as though she never existed.

She thinks of them and lives they'll lead without her, knowing they will mourn her just as fiercely as she would mourn them. They can believe what they like of her and the time they had with her - that _she_ carried them through everything, but the deepest parts of Shepard know the truth… that _they_ were the ones who carried _her_. Shepard can't count the number of times she would have fallen without them.

There is an uncomfortable vacuum that surrounds her, presses against her from all sides and steals what is left of the breath in her lungs, strangles what is left of her faintly beating heart. Finally, the evacuation of her soul, the suction of the pulling and ripping of the intangible from the corporeal.

In the darkness that finally encapsulates her, Shepard can hear the distant, rolling tide.

And the sudden crash of water around her is familiar, welcome. Dragged under and drifting in the undercurrents, Shepard doesn't fight the eddies as they whirl her around and around waiting for them to carry her to the surface again. She lets herself drift down and down because since she's really dead this time, she doesn't _need _to breathe anymore. There in the deep dark is a profound silence she has never experienced that drowns out the last fading echoes of struggle, of battle and death - and there is only the drift and the steady _tha-dump, tha-dump_ of a heart that doesn't _need _to beat any longer; and she doesn't have to ruin it by trashing around in a storm of bubbles with the last of her air supply. So she holds the breath that she doesn't need anymore until her feet touch the bottom, stands a moment amid the calm and quiet and pressure before kicking off forcefully.

It's on habit alone that she breaks the surface with a gasp, that she tries to catch her breath. Shepard lets herself drift still amid the waves, allowing the tide to wash her ashore like forgotten debris. But this time when her knees pull up underneath her, there are hands that grab under her arms and haul her to her feet.

"Easy there, Commander."

Her head jerks up, eyes wide as her throat closes. "Ash?" she manages to choke out.

Ashley smiles at her and it's _beautiful_, genuine and warm. Plagued night after night with hearing Ash's voice in her nightmares, the first direct casualty of a decision Shepard made, seeing only her silhouette she was sure the younger woman had hated her in those final moments. But now, knowing that Ash has been here with warmth and beauty far from death and destruction makes it easier.

"I -"

Ash raises her hand, the smile still in place. "Don't. I know."

"How did you get here?"

She shrugs. "Same way you did. I was here last time you were here too; _you_ just didn't belong here yet. I always knew that if you were going to kick the bucket it was going to be on your terms."

Shepard looks to Ash again who is just as lively as she was when she lived, and just as beautiful. But the last time Shepard saw her, Ash was pale and drawn - just as they all had been in those final days before facing Sovereign. There is none of that tension in her now as she pushes aside her straight, dark hair and her eyes are bright, _alive_ with the laid back nature of her demeanor.

"You look good, Ash," Shepard says as they begin to walk down the beach.

Ash chuckles, crosses her arms. "Yeah, found the cure for old age."

The walk and talk, the ease of their friendship slipping back into place and Ash tells her there is more here than just the beach. There is a whole world to explore here, rolling plains that gradient into vast deserts, dense jungles and snow capped peaks; sudden shifts in landscape that defy the laws of nature as they knew them. But no cities, no modernization, no populated areas, no crowds of shoving people or the near constant feel of 'need to now' - and Shepard realizes that she is completely okay with that.

They crest a sand dune and come across the beach crowded with people as far as the sand stretches, of every race and species the galaxy held. People hugging and crying, reuniting with loved ones death briefly separated them from - husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters. And when Shepard and Ash's shadows fall long in the descent, people stop one by one and turn to them and all Shepard sees is joy in those upturned faces.

They know her, Shepard realizes. They know who she is and what she's done and why she's here.

Hesitantly, a woman steps forward, her young son beside her with his face squashed against her side. There are tears in her eyes as she reaches a hand out to Shepard and without really knowing why, she gives the woman her hand.

"Thank you, Commander Shepard. _Thank you_." The woman says empathically.

Commander Shepard. It seems so formal now that she's dead and she doesn't quite feel like the same person any more. Commander Shepard is a solider born in battle, bathed in blood and hardened in hails of bullets. She is a solider who has killed ruthlessly, carried the weight of the galaxy on her shoulders and never stumbled. It is a name and title she has hidden her humanity behind accepting that what was needed from her was the brutal confidence that never seemed to waver. And though Shepard will never regret her military career, all of that is behind her now, left with the ashes of her earthly remains.

Here, she can be human. She can be a woman.

So she shakes her head at the woman and smiles. "Jane," she says, "my name is Jane."

And she surrenders Commander Shepard.

"I should go," Ash says suddenly, "but I'll see you again soon, I promise. Besides, I think there's someone here looking for you."

Jane says nothing, only nods and lets Ashley wander off, disappearing into the sea of people around her. She begins her own search in the crowd seeking one familiar face in a sea of perhaps hundreds of thousands. She wonders briefly who all these people are and why they're here on the side of this world where she surfaced. And there are many _thank yous_ and appreciative smiles and nods as she searches, many pats on the shoulder, hand shakes and on a few occasions hugs from people she has never met in her waking life.

She also wonders how much time has passed since she was last here because time seemed to pass differently here. The last time Jane was here, she spent almost a day walking the beach and yet, she hadn't been unconscious for more than a few moments in the waking world. Has it been months for Thane that she was seperated from him, returned to life for perhaps only another hour to finish her mission? The thought sends her heart plummeting to the depths of her stomach.

But the more she searches, the more Jane begins to panic. _She can't find him_, and despite the fact that it is _impossible_, the thought that maybe, just maybe he has forgotten she was returning feels like a poison in her veins. Is she to be alone now, trapped on this beach with the shades of all the people she was too late to save, a constant reminder of her failings?

And just when she has given up hope searching for one set of familiar eyes amid thousands, Jane hears his voice. It's not more than a whisper, but it screams in her heart and Jane spins to face him, blindly throwing her arms around his neck before she's even confirmed it's really Thane.

"I thought you'd forgotten," she says and her voice trembles.

His fingers are in her hair again, his mouth against the shell of her ear. "Never, siha. You know it's not possible."

"Who are all these people, Thane?" Jane wonders, pressing her face into his neck. "Why do they know me?"

"They are the souls you have given peace."

Jane pulls back, feels her eyebrows press together. "But… they _died_. They should hate me because I should have won sooner, fought harder… anything but let so many die."

Thane nods, patient with her as he always has been. "Yes, they have died. But you fought for them and died for them, for those of them who have families that yet live. You paid the ultimate price so someone else never has to again, freed them of the darkness in which they listlessly wandered, searching. You are a hero to them."

She sighs wearily and feels her body sag against his. "I don't want to _be_ a hero anymore, Thane."

"Then tell me what you wish siha, and I will make it so," he says and gently traces his hand along the curve of her jaw, guiding her to face him once again.

She catches his hand, smooth and cool to the touch, just as she remembers. His fingers are long, nearly an extra knuckle longer than her own and strong. Jane remembers with clarity the time spent in Normandy's Life Support, examining Thane's hands across the table as he held her own, running the pads of her fingers over the raised scars on his knuckles. She remembers admiring the grace with which his fingers moved along the lines of her palm, the sensitive skin of her wrists.

Breathing a sigh, Jane presses a kiss to the palm of Thane's hand and lays it against her cheek. She closes her eyes. "After everything, I just… want to _be_."

And suddenly Jane doesn't hear the shifting and murmuring of the crowd around her, it's all been swept away by a sea breeze and all she can hear is the crashing of the waves and Thane's steady breathing. When she braves to look around, they're alone as they were not too long ago when she promised to return to him. The claustrophobia of the crowd is gone and she _breathes. _

When she turns her attention back to Thane, her eyes slide to meet his, fathomless, but no matter how dark, they're warm in their intensity and Jane sees the all too familiar fire burning in them. He curves down and she rises, they meet somewhere in the middle and begin the desperate push and pull, give and take she was afraid she had forgotten. And yet, just as before there is no rushing, no urgency, every move is deliberate, careful as though they've never touched before.

But Thane unties her sarong and she pushes away his jacket and all at once, everything shifts because _there_ is the primal heat, snarling and hungry for pleasures it has gone far too long without. She's aware of the flats of his palms on her back, her hips, curling under her thighs as he guides her to the sand, the trail of his mouth along her skin thrilling warmth through her veins.

And once again Jane measures out her life in breaths, only there is no pain this time, there's things she's half-forgotten and desperately tries to reclaim now. There is the weight of Thane above her, moving with her, the taste of his skin and the tension leaving his shoulders as she sighs and breathes his name. There is simplicity, a funny thing considering the convoluted road that brought them here, the different paths they traveled together and separate.

And when it's over, Jane sleeps curled against his chest listening to Thane breathe nothings into her hair as her world finally, _finally_ realigns.

* * *

**EDITED: 5/19/12**


End file.
